122 TITLES OF BOOKS MAINLY IN 500-700 COPIES TO BE PUBLISHED WITHIN
FRAMEWORK OF STATE ORDER THIS YEAR
YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. 122 titles of
children’s, popular scientific, encyclopedic, jubilee and translation
books will be published within the framework of state order in 2007 as
compared with nearly 130 titles of 2006. For this purpose RA government
allocated 135 mln 400 thousand drams (nearly 370 thousand USD) to Book
Publishing Agency of RA Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs. As
Seyranuhi Geghamian, Head of Publishing Department, said in her
interview to Noyan Tapan correspondent, Sergei Dovlatov’s collection
"Zona" will be published for the first time in Armenian and Khachik
Dadayan’s work "Armenians and Baku" in Russian. Encyclopedia "I am
Citizen of Armenia" will be also published for schoolchildren this
year. In S.Geghamian’s words, 120-130 titles of books have been
published within the framework of state order since 2002, which is
equal to the number of books published before, but its circulation is
still inferior to the index of the Soviet years: formerly they were
published in 50-100 thousand copies, while now they are published in
500-700 copies. At the same time, according to S.Geghamian’s
observations, demand for books has increased, the evidence of this are
opening of 5-6 new bookstores in 2005-2006 in Yerevan. Saying that a
great number of Russian-language literature is currently brought to
Armenia, S.Geghamian mentioned that this does not mean that books
published in Armenian are not of much demand. Fiction published in
Armenian almost is not sold, but children’s, popular scientific and
encyclopedic literature is sold very well. In Geghamian’s words,
readers prefer to read works created in the past: the modern writers do
not attract them. Nevertheless, in her words, one should not disregard
the modern writers and the modern literature should be published for it
to be studied and estimated by literary critics in the future.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
